Refraction
by Calico Kat
Summary: Written for Zoro's birthday, a study in possiblities. [mxm, mxf] Revised September 27, 2005.


**Refraction**

Refraction, n. 1. the change of direction of a ray of light, sound, or heat, or the like, in passing obliquely from one medium to another in which its speed is different

* * *

If somebody asked he couldn't tell them when it started. One day it was "Meat! Meat! Meat!" and "Pirate King!" and suddenly it was "Meat! Meat! Meat!" and "Pirate King!" and "Zoro!" 

It doesn't matter how it started. Zoro's body is real warm, and when he puts his arm over him Luffy fits just-so underneath it. Since Zoro learned not to bother him while he's eating, they haven't had any real big arguments.

Luffy never **needed** sex. He wasn't **missing** it. But the way him and Zoro fit together feels real good. He doesn't mind if they have sex a lot more often! It's just like he caught Ace doing with the girl, back in the time when his brother explained the whole world to him -- only this is with Zoro, who's a lot bigger than a girl, and kinda smelly sometimes.

Not much has changed since Zoro fit just like that into Luffy's life. Zoro still watches his back when he's off into the fray unthinking. There's still no guy he likes to have at his side better when he's off on the scent of adventure! They never talk about it or anything; they don't really got to. Then they're alone and Zoro starts tickling him and he's squirming and squirming and hey! They're kissing. And he giggles. Zoro laughs against his lips, the feeling of warm air in puffs against his skin. They spend a while together, alone, the two of them. They don't need anybody else, right then.

* * *

She didn't think she needed something like this. He's big, and sweaty, and he can be pretty dumb. He never does what she tells him to! When they get into yelling matches, the whole ship hears it and the whole ship hears about it from her. (Never from him.) He lumbers off into a corner like the big muscle-head he is and falls asleep like it doesn't matter. 

Sometimes she thinks he isn't worth the upkeep.

Then there's the quiet times alone together when she doesn't remember how she got by without him, when he stands by her writing desk and watches her draw. His eyes follow the simple lines she brings together into inlets and on to form islands, and she explains to him how each piece of cartography equipment works. He listens. He doesn't always understand, or catch on the first time, but it matters to him what she's doing. What she does.

Nobody's ever given her that kind of attention before.

When his lips are on hers and her hands are tracing the scars on his body, she knows if things ever changed that she'd miss it. She knows this is something she doesn't want to lose.

Nami's known a lot of men. Rough men. Pirates. She's been a long, slow time trusting. Even with these men she trusts with her life, trusting Zoro with herself isn't an easy thing. Neither is trusting herself with Zoro. She's afraid to give him that same attention he's showing her -- but someday, soon, she knows she'll be brave enough. She's learning that, when it comes to some things, he has the patience of a saint.

* * *

If he'd just kept his mouth shut… He wouldn't have all that he's got now. 

"Hey, you wanna help me with this?"

Seven words. Two guys. One serious hard on. Him and Zoro's inability to keep anything they do from becoming a competition.

They still compete about everything: who gets to use the ship's bathroom first, who can get through scrubbing the deck down the fastest, who can take out the most enemy pirates, who's gonna be on top tonight… Only thing they don't fight about is whose dick is bigger.

That's Zoro's. But it's not the size that counts, anyway, Sanji always argues. It's all about _precision_. (Which Sanji has a lot more of. It's a proven. fact.)

It's all in the spirit of violating what was, in Sanji's opinion, far too pure of a mind before he got to it. But he's gotta admit Zoro's one hell of a guy, never willing to back down from anything. While Sanji wants to paint himself every inch the guy that Zoro is, when the swordsman picks him up -- tosses him on the bed like it doesn't mean a thing -- it puts a thrill in him, makes him think. Wrestling with somebody who's that big and that dangerous is pretty damn kinky. Just knowing how much strength the swordsman's holding back when he lets him pin him down against the mattress ought to have put the fear of god in Sanji a long time ago, but it hasn't yet.

Sanji thinks about it sometimes when he flicks the butt of his cigarette out over the ocean and watches the fading embers fall: what a great buddy a guy is if you can fuck around with him like that. It's a hell of a thing they've got, him and that shitty bastard.

* * *

She had thought she'd given up on everything in her life except that one, distant goal set far before her: the one thing that kept her going forward, pushing herself through every indignity and depravity she suffered. After twenty years, she had thought she was alone in her single-minded obsession. She sees that same dedication in him. 

They know what it is like to throw everything away for a dream. They know what it is like for the achievement of one goal to be all that a person needs strive for. They know what it is like to kill, to watch the blood seep from a wound they cut, to watch the life go out of glazing eyes. He is still younger than she is. He's still less affected. He still laughs loudly and lives recklessly.

She has become addicted to the way his eyes light up when he speaks softly to her of swordsmanship and honor, when they sit side by side, his arm over her shoulders, and she asks for him to help her understand these ideals he holds. She has become addicted to his smile and the way he slouches in a sprawl when he's relaxed; the way he sometimes blushes when he finds a hand appearing somewhere unexpected, unaccustomed to playing sexual games. They laugh together. She is learning to laugh at herself and all that has become bitter within her with a slow budding cheer.

If his youth is infectious, his strength is welcome. She has never felt so protected, nor has she ever felt so secure. She had been hesitant at first to even give names to her crewmates, to make them a part of her life, knowing how, for her goal, she might have to cast everything else aside. When she calls him by his name it makes everything so immediate and suddenly too real -- but the fear in her has begun to subside. Each time he looks to her, asking, and she knows against all doubts he will never by his choice let her down.

Where there is fear, a touch quells it, a salve to the wounds inside her. Though he may so often be so obtuse, he seems to know when she needs it most. For that, she can be his more discerning half. Robin thinks with long ingrained cynicism that it seems far too melodramatic to dwell on how little in the world exists that could make her give him up. She accepts this partnership for what it is, and for all the ways it makes her stronger.


End file.
